Abdullah ibn Bakr al-Sahmi

Abdullah ibn Bakr al-Sahmi (عبد الله بن بكر بن حبيب السهمي الباهلي), kunya Abu Wahb, was a hadith transmitter of the ninth generation (tabaqa), a Basran of the Sahm clan of the tribe of Bahila who settled in Baghdad and is reported to have died there in 208 AH.^{1 • 2} He appears in the chains (isnad) of several canonical Sunni collections: Abu Dawud, al-Nasa'i, and Ibn Majah transmitted hadith through him, and Ibn Hibban listed him among the reliable transmitters in his book al-Thiqat.¹

Life and historical context

Al-Dhahabi's entry in the Siyar A'lam al-Nubala gives his titles as al-Hafiz (the hadith master) and al-Hujja (the authority), and records that he was born during the caliphate of Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik.³

His lifetime spans the period in which hadith transmitter criticism (al-jarh wa-l-ta'dil) took shape as a scientific field. Modern scholarship dates that establishment to the second quarter of the 2nd century AH.⁵ Basra, his city of origin, was one of the great centers of hadith learning in the 2nd/8th century: a recent methodological study of Basran hadith circles examined 1,500 narrators who lived in Basra during that century and distilled a master set of 900 narrators on which isnad analysis can be based, finding that the circles of al-Hasan al-Basri, Muhammad ibn Sirin, Thabit al-Bunani, and Yahya ibn Abi Kathir stood out.⁶

Teachers and students

His teachers. He heard from his father, Bakr ibn Habib, whom al-Dhahabi calls "shaykh al-Arabiyya," the doyen of Arabic philology; the Siyar records that the grammarians Abu Amr ibn al-Ala' al-Mazini and Isa ibn Umar once referred their dispute over the word satar/wasatar to Bakr ibn Habib for arbitration.³ His other teachers were Humayd al-Tawil, Ibn Awn, Sa'id ibn Abi Aruba, and Hatim ibn Abi Saghira.³ Ibn Manjuwayh's Rijal Sahih Muslim adds that he narrated from Hatim ibn Abi Saghira during the hajj.⁷

His students. The transmitters who narrated from him include Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Abu Khaythama, and al-Harith ibn Abi Usama.^{4 • 2} The record of his transmission includes Ibrahim ibn Marzuq al-Basri, Ibrahim ibn Ya'qub al-Jawzajani, Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Abu Ja'far Ahmad ibn al-Khalil al-Baghdadi, and Ahmad ibn Sa'id al-Jammal.^{1 • 10}

Narrations and presence in the collections

The classical record of his transmission is modest but positive. Ibn Hibban included him in al-Thiqat, and Abu Dawud, al-Nasa'i, and Ibn Majah transmitted hadith through him; al-Dhahabi's Siyar cites one Abu Dawud hadith reaching him via Muhammad ibn Isa from Hajjaj.^{1 • 8} The Sunnah.com narrator database indexes 234 hadith narrated through him.²

Evaluation by hadith critics

The jarh wa ta'dil verdicts on him are consistently favorable, with the classical gradings attributed as follows:

• Ibn Sa'd: "thiqah sadiq" (reliable and truthful).⁴
• Ahmad ibn Hanbal: declared him thiqah and praised him.^{3 • 4}
• Yahya ibn Ma'in: said "thiqah," and "salih" (sound in hadith) on another occasion.²
• Al-Dhahabi: in al-Kashif, "hafiz, thiqah, narrated from Humayd, Ibn Awn, and Bahz; narrated from him Muhammad ibn al-Faraj, Ibn Mula'ib, and al-Harith ibn Abi Usama."²
• Ibn Hajar: in al-Taqrib, "thiqah, abstained from the qada" (judicial office).²

The abstention Ibn Hajar notes refers to a recorded anecdote: Suwar offered Abdullah ibn Bakr the judgeship of al-Ubulla and he refused. When Suwar asked whether he raised himself above the qada of al-Ubulla, he answered, "No, but I raise my knowledge above the qada of al-Ubulla."⁴

Contested material. The Hawramani entry for the Abu Wahb form of his name records that Abdullah ibn Munir and Ishaq narrated from him material described as "not attributed to him" (ghayr mansub) in the chapters of wudu and tafsir.⁹

By the numbers

The quantitative profile of his transmission is small: 234 hadith through him on Sunnah.com, and among the narrators from him are several people, including Ahmad ibn Hanbal.^{2 • 1 • 10} For context, a modern network study of Basran hadith circles examined the 1,500 narrators of 2nd/8th-century Basra, of whom 900 form the master set for isnad analysis, and found that the most-cited teacher-student networks included the circles of al-Hasan al-Basri and Muhammad ibn Sirin.⁶

References

1. Tahdhib al-Kamal fi Asma' al-Rijal (al-Mizzi), entry for Abdullah ibn Bakr ibn Habib al-Sahmi, Shamela
2. `Abd Allah ibn Bakr al-Bahili, Narrators, Sunnah.com
3. Al-Dhahabi, Siyar A'lam al-Nubala, entry for Abdullah ibn Bakr ibn Habib al-Sahmi al-Bahili, Arshif al-Islam
4. Abdullah ibn Bakr ibn Habib al-Sahmi, The Hadith Transmitters Encyclopedia (Hawramani)
5. Referential Value of Hadith Transmitter Criticism in the 2nd/8th Century: The Case of Shu'bah ibn al-Hajjaj, Ilahiyat Studies
6. A Proposal for a Methodology of Determining Scholarly Circles of Ahl al-Hadith: The Case of Basra During the First Half of the 2nd/8th Century, Islam Arastirmalari Dergisi
7. Ibn Manjuwayh, Rijal Sahih Muslim, entry for Abdullah ibn Abi Bakr ibn Habib al-Sahmi, tarajm.com
8. Al-Dhahabi, Siyar A'lam al-Nubala (al-Risala edition), Shamela
9. Abdullah ibn Bakr ibn Habib Abu Wahb al-Sahmi, The Hadith Transmitters Encyclopedia (Hawramani)
10. عبد الله بن بكر بن حبيب

Initially written Oct 10, 2026 · Edited: Oct 11, 2026; Oct 15, 2026

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